FLO FITNESS

I'd like to begin by thanking everyone for the comments, shares, likes, and questions from Part 1 of Mental Mobility. I believe we are onto something with this concept. I encourage you all to be part of our creative process with this. Here are our next two definitions of  "Mental Mobility" The ability to change your mind or belief with new information. WOW! Talk about timing with this one. I am not a political person by any stretch of the imagination, however, just watching this election shows who among us posses or lack mental mobility. I once heard Eric Thomas say, "Information changes situations." This rings true with our current election as well as the situation with fitness. There is always a new study, research, science, etc that negates or changes what we thought we knew. We must be able to accept this new information and adopt it into our current training system or thought process. We can not be at the forefront of an industry with an ignorant or fi...

    I have been kicking around this idea of "Mental Mobility" for awhile in my head. I decided to blog about it to see what the feedback would be. In this blog I will share two of the six concepts of  "Mental Mobility". Please comment and share so we can create a more solid definition. -Mental Mobility is the ability to forward think without loss of enthusiasm.     People are so fast to knock any idea that is new or unfamiliar to them. They tend to bash ideas before the person can get to nurture it to help it grow. It's my belief that a person who possess mental mobility will be able to continue to pursue their idea even after having it crushed or bashed by someone else. They must understand that the idea/dream was given to them to have, and that is why other people can not understand. Our visions are for our eyes only. Once we build them up and make them tangible, that is when others will begin to understand. -Mental Mobility is the ability to adapt and t...

In order to move, we need to voluntarily tell our muscles to contract, choosing how, when, and what we move. In simple terms, our brains send messages to our muscles via nerves. Thanks to our consciousness, we have the ability to voluntarily control which muscles we use and in what proportions we use them. A study conducted by Bret Contreras showed that experienced weightlifters could significantly alter muscle recruitment without significantly altering form 1 . In other words, experienced lifters could actually change what muscles they used in any given exercise simply by using their minds! This may not come as a surprise to some of you but the mind-muscle connection has serious implications for trainers and coaches. The take home point is that just because a client’s form may “look good,” doesn’t mean that the client is actually using the muscles that the exercise is intended to target. Don’t get me wrong, proper form is very important when it comes to training, however...

As Chris Flo discussed in a recent 15 minutes of FLO, since 2009 Flo Fitness has incorporated the TRX into both training and rehab protocol. In his video, Chris talks about how he uses the TRX for shoulder rehab; however, in this article we will discuss the wide-ranging benefits the TRX in both training and rehab settings. What is the TRX? According to their website, the TRX was created a NAVY Seal and is “ a highly portable performance training tool that leverages gravity and the user's body weight to complete 100s of exercises.” Here is a link to the website if you would like to check it out: https://www.trxtraining.com/ . Benefits of using the TRX in a training setting -        It is lightweight and highly portable o    It can be used indoors or outdoors for training -        It can be used to perform and/or modify almost any exercise you can think of o    Body position and strap ...

As Chris Flores mentioned in a recent 15 minutes of FLO, video assessments are a great tool for coaches/trainers.   Video assessments are not only important in creating an athlete-specific training program, but, if used correctly, they can serve as a significant selling point to bring on new clients. Below I will briefly break down the benefits of using video assessments as they relate to assessing/training and as they relate to   a business model. Video assessments help a coach/trainer to assess and create customized training plans for their clients. By using a video assessment, a coach/trainer can: -        watch an assessment multiple times -        watch an assessment in slow motion -        pause an assessment at a particular moment in time -        compare assessments side by side -        draw on top o...

Hamstring Mobility If you were to look at the hamstring muscles ( biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus) of the general population, you would find that the majority of people, especially those who sit with poor posture, have “tight” hamstrings. Why should you care about hamstring mobility? “Tight” hamstrings are chronically shortened. Chronically shortened hamstring muscles are problematic for many reasons but in an attempt to keep this post brief, I will discuss only two. 1.     Tight Hamstrings can cause low back pain The hamstring muscles (with the exception of the short head of the biceps femoris) attach to the ischial tuberosity which is part of the pelvis. Tight hamstrings both result from and subsequently cause a posterior pelvic tilt.   When the pelvis is chronically pulled into a posterior tilt by tight hamstrings, it cannot properly/smoothly tilt anteriorly in synchrony...